Joynerzone

We have done the typical already…not take many pictures of the 3rd child! We have just been soaking up the time with Ridley, but have failed to take many pictures. Sorry! We’ll try to take more!

So, this is my final pregnancy picture at 36 1/2 wks. My water had already broken at this point, and Stephen reminded me that I had wanted to take a picture. I had told him on Saturday night that when I was ready for church the next morning, we’d take another picture since I hadn’t had one in a while. Well…I didn’t go to church, but we managed to get a picture anyway! Just not how we had envisioned the last picture of the pregnancy!

Here are a few pictures that were taken about 4 1/2 hrs after delivery. This was the first time the kids had met their new baby brother. A friend of ours, Amanda, had picked up the kids before church and took care of them all day. We are blessed to have friends that we can call on that will take care of our munchkins like their own.  Colby even started calling Amanda “Mommy.” HA! (You can click on any picture to make it bigger).

Ridley had a bit of facial bruising from a rather rapid entrance into the world. I’ll share the birth story in a blog post soon.

Here are some other pictures we’ve taken over the last couple of days.

Here are a couple of the proud big brother and sister with their new baby brother!

We will try to be better and take more pictures! We are enjoying Ridley tremendously. We’re a bit tired, of course, as is par for the course for life with newborns.  Abriella and Colby are trying to adjust to the changes. They are needing a bit of extra attention, but they dearly love Ridley.  God has blessed us with 3 beautiful children, and we are so incredibly thankful to Him.

Ridley David Joyner

Born January 22, 2012

2:20 pm

6 lbs 4 oz

20 inches long

Our newest family member surprised us with his arrival on Sunday. We were not expecting him just yet. He was born into the loving hands of his daddy in our home, with the assistance of our Certified Nurse Midwife, Sandra. He and I are doing great, and big sister and big brother are loving their new baby brother! We are incredibly blessed! God has answered our prayers for a healthy baby!

God is good!

Psalm 139:13-14

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

Well, we are back into the swing of preschool and attempting to re-enter some routine. The last few weeks have been a bit crazy. Here’s a recap.

The week before Christmas, I finally gave in and sought some medical intervention for my incessant cough that was making me (and others in the house) absolutely miserable. Stephen had even started sleeping on the couch so he could get some sleep through all my coughing. My pregnant belly hurt, my back hurt, a had pressure in places I didn’t need to have pressure yet , and I couldn’t take a deep breath due to a stabbing pain in my back on my right side. On top of all that, I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. So, the doctor said I had a “chest infection” (which is just a generic blanket diagnosis, but whatever) and also an ear infection. He prescribed me a Z-Pak and some Robitussin-ac (has codeine in it). Z-paks are awesome! I was feeling much improved even after 24 hrs! So thankful for fast acting antibiotics! Also thankful I didn’t cough this baby out!!

Then, the week after Christmas, I took Colby in for his cough.  He’s always been our coughing child. Any illness he has seems to have some kind of coughing fits to it. Anyway, he saw someone other than his regular pediatrician. Colby performed splendidly at the doc’s office, with plenty of coughing to prove his ailment. Yay! haha. (You know what I mean, like when you take your car in and it doesn’t make that sound for the mechanic. Same with kids and doctors. They often act perfectly fine when at the doc’s office and you look like a fool! HA!).  Anyway, after checking him out, he diagnosed him with bronchitis. Gave him the liquid, kid version of a Z-Pak and also Albuterol in syrup form. Both of these also worked wonders for him. He’s cough free now.

Stephen and I went to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra right before Christmas (my drugs had started working enough that I wasn’t miserable that day! Praise the Lord!). This was my gift to Stephen for Christmas. He has never been, but has wanted to see them for a long time. According to him, it was the best Christmas gift ever! We definitely enjoyed the show. They certainly put on quite a production!!

David and Janet came and spent the New Year’s weekend with us. We enjoyed their visit thoroughly, and I definitely enjoyed having someone else cook for a couple of days! Thank you Janet! Of course, the kids greatly enjoyed having Pappa and Gammy here, and they showed off their biking skills one day, riding all the way to the neighborhood park (playing for a little bit there) and then riding back, and then playing on their playscape in our back yard. It was a lot of fun.

Back in November, we went to Katy, TX for Thanksgiving. We had a great time. We all enjoyed a beautiful day at the Houston Zoo and then the next day went to the Children’s Museum (along with about a thousand other people!! It was a cold, rainy day…), but had a great time there as well! We forgot our camera for most events at Thanksgiving. Don’t believe we took many while David and Janet were here either. We have been bad about that lately!

Oh, back in October, we had the good ole Halloween. Abriella was a princess and Colby was a knight. Both enjoyed the holiday candy immensely! We still have candy from that holiday. I use it for bribery purposes!

I am now going to put links here for a lot of pictures that have been taken over the past few months. Click on each picture to go to the web album for those pictures. You can just glance through them as you wish. I may add captions at some point, but otherwise, just use your imagination! HA!

Don’t forget to vote on baby Joyner #3′s gender in the post below!

VBS (back in June!):

Vacation Bible School

Just some silly random pictures:

Random Pictures

Oh, we went to Sea World back in October, and the kids loved it! Abriella especially enjoyed it. There are also some pictures from the local pumpkin patch in here as well.

Pumpkin Patch and Sea World

Here are Halloween pictures. We had several different places we went to for parties this year. I didn’t take any pictures on the day they actually went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. This was the first year either of them did that though, and they enjoyed that. Just went to a few houses on our street.

Halloween

These are some pictures from the preschool fall program in November. We got some video as well. We bought the video that the school had a guy come in and do, which I have to say I was slightly disappointed in. They did a lot of close up shots mostly, so you ended up missing the funny things the kids did during the performances because they focused on one kid or another. Oh well. Both of our kids did great. Both sang and did the motions, so we enjoyed it a lot!

Fall Program

These are some pics of the kids helping Stephen decorate our tree this year. Our tree was primarily plastic ornaments and heavily concentrated around the bottom, since they did the most decorating. I left my nice ornaments in the box for yet another year.

Decorating Christmas Tree

Here are some more silly pics of the kids playing dress-up. As always, Colby usually goes for princess clothes! HA! Poor child needs a brother!

Dress up

These are some pictures from a movie night we did as a family before Christmas. The kids kept asking for popcorn (like for breakfast!), and I would tell them no. So, I figured we’d make a big deal out of having popcorn and put it with a movie night, which they’ve never done either. We watched some old Christmas cartoons that were on Netflix. The kids loved it! In case you were wondering, Colby dressed himself in these pictures.

Family Movie Night

And, here are the rest of our pictures from our December photo shoot. We ended up purchasing the CD of all the pictures.

Pics by Melody

I think that should be enough to keep y’all entertained for a while! HA! That sort of catches me up for now! I’m 35 wks pregnant now, so we’re nearing the end! Slightly scary, yet very exciting! Again, vote below for your guess on boy or girl for this sweet baby!

We are rapidly approaching the arrival of baby #3. What do you think the gender will be?? Here is some info to help, maybe. I was sicker this time than with Colby, but not as sick as with Abriella. I had 2 dreams earlier in pregnancy that it is a boy. Stephen has had a dream that it’s a girl. The heartbeat has been in the mid-140′s. I’m carrying different this time than either of the other 2 pregnancies, but couldn’t even tell you how different, but it just feels slightly different (the first 2 were the exact same). Good luck!

If you are really into guessing things, you can also throw in a guess for when you think this baby will arrive, and the weight!! I’m due February 16. Abriella arrived 3 wks before her due date, weighing 6-6. Colby arrived 2 wks before his due date (ok, technically 13 days), weighing in at 7-7. So, what about this one??  You can guess in the comments.

Winner of each category will get…a big ole pat on the back and a “way to go!”

Well, I learned something new this weekend.  Abriella, age 4, can read!! Let me explain. She has “read” books to us before, but they were books that we had read to her millions of times, so I was pretty sure she just had them memorized. She kept telling us she could read. We just agreed with her. Pappa and Gammy came this weekend for their Christmas with the kids. I had told them that if they could get her some beginner reading books, she would probably like that, and I knew Janet would know where and what to get since she is a teacher.

So, they got her lots of Dick and Jane books and some other Step 1 (preschool – kindergarten) and Step 2 books (preschool – grade 1). So, she grabs one of the Dick and Jane books, and she basically flies through the entire book, reading it aloud to us, with very little guidance! She read all 32 pages of it out loud at one sitting!! What?! I was shocked! She read another Step 2 book to us this morning, and did just as good! I asked her when she learned to read, and she told us when she turned 4. HA! She had always told me she would start reading when she turned 4, because someone she knew was 4, and they said they could read, so she figured 4 was the magic age! How funny is that?!

I’m just uber impressed with her reading skills. I know she has learned a ton from Starfall.com and then also her V-reader, which she uses most days during her quiet time. I can honestly say that my only part would be reading TO her, which I know is important. I’m just so happy that my little 4 year old can read, and she LOVES it!

Sorry for those that were hoping for a Christmas card from us this year. I will be sending pictures of the kids and a family picture to some of the family members over the next week, but no cute little cards this year. Just took the year off this year.

Last night, this is how the big man in red left things:

The kids went to bed fairly well last night, with Abriella telling me that I needed to make sure I got into my bed clothes pretty quick too, so Santa could come! HA!

This morning, around 6:25 or so, we realize a light is on in the house. Us a bit sleepy, thinking it was the Christmas tree lights, thought they had already come downstairs (they are not supposed to come out until their clock turns green in their room, which occurs at 7am). Stephen got up to investigate. Turns out it was the bathroom light upstairs that was on. Abriella had already gone potty, and Stephen found Colby had already taken off his diaper, had put underwear on, and was struggling to get his pajama pants back on. When Stephen got there, Colby was up on his sister’s bunk, and she was trying to assist him in getting his pj’s back on. HA!

Stephen then told them to wait until their light turned green to come back out. Torture, I know, right? Abriella came out a few minutes later, and informed us that the light was “never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to turn green!” You get the idea. Stephen refrained from laughing and told her that she had to wait a few more minutes and it indeed would turn green.

We decided to take our posts on the couch a minute or so before we knew they’d come storming down. We heard the door open and joyful feet running down the stairs as soon as that clock had even a hint of green! HA!

These are some pictures that Stephen took before church and a couple after church this morning. I took some video as well that I will get up later. (click on picture to go to gallery of pictures)

Christmas 2011

One thing we learned today is that both of our kids are quite adept at riding bicycles! Once we got Colby’s adjusted enough that he could actually reach the pedals, and then with a little practice, he went to town! He can turn circles and corners and get on and off of the bike himself. Abriella seemed like she had ridden a bike all of her life! She was just riding in circles like it was nothing else! So glad that they are enjoying those treasures! We can’t ride outside right now because it is cold and rainy. But, our house is getting a workout with these bikes.

Colby got a Leapster2 with a couple of cartridges–a Cars one and a Crayola one. Abriella got 3 more cartridges for her V-Reader that she got for her birthday–Tangled, Cars2, and Toy Story 3. Of course, the V-reader and Leapster are being shared back and forth between the kids, which is good.

Abriella also got a Disney sweatshirt and princess activity pad from Patrick, Lindsay, Jack, and Katie. Colby got a Mr. Potato Head from them as well.

In the stockings, they each got a puzzle (princess for her, cars for him), a small thing of m&m’s, a dart gun type thing, and a little activity pack thing.

They loved every thing they got! Hopefully, the bikes will provide lots of good exercise and the V-Reader and Leapster lots of mental stimulation!

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

Abriella with Santa 2007:

Abriella with Santa 2008:

Abriella and Colby with Santa 2009:

Abriella and Colby with Santa 2010:

And, introducing our newest addition to the Santa visits, Abriella and Colby in 2011. We had to bribe Colby to even be IN the picture, so we were thrilled with this picture! HAHA!

Gotta love the torture we put these children through for the big man in red!

If you’d like to see a sneak peek of our photo session from yesterday morning, go to http://www.melodycphotography.com/blog/ and scroll down until you see our family. It was in the low 40s when we did this session, but surprisingly, that didn’t seem too bad. We were originally going to do this last week, but the day we were scheduled was supposed to be 28 degrees when we were out. No thank you! Our private photo gallery will be available to us to view at the end of this week. Melody is busting her tail to get it out quicker than normal due to the impending holidays and since we had to delay the session a week. Hopefully, we’ll get something out, card wise, by the new year! Melody is another one of the talented photographers that attends church with us. We seem to be surrounded by them, which is not a bad thing at all! We enjoyed our session and can’t wait to see the rest of our pictures!

Can’t believe I’m almost 30 wks in this pregnancy. Before too long, we’ll start taking guesses on what this baby’s gender will be! I’ve been going back and forth on what I think. Some days, I think girl, and some days, I think boy.  Of course, every friend and stranger has their opinion that they are more than willing to share. I think it’s hilarious! Feeling pretty good. LBJ (little baby Joyner) is growing, growing, growing. That is evidenced by my ever-expanding girth but also by the strength of these movements! Wowzers. This baby is not gentle at all!  Lately, he/she has been laying transverse, so I’m getting abuse on both sides of my abdomen at the same time. Fun! HAHA! Anyway, here is a picture from this Sunday at 29 1/2 weeks.

As for the kids, they have been in the same room since before Thanksgiving! They are doing better every night. Colby is definitely the trouble maker in there. He climbs up into the top bed with his sister and irritates her, not allowing her to get to sleep, and also waking her up in the morning. However, we made the clock in there turn green at 7am (I hadn’t had it set like that in a while), and they are getting good about waiting until then to come out. Of course, Colby tries to yell at it to turn green…starting at about 6:45am some days. I did tell him the other day that this tactic doesn’t work and not to keep trying it, so he has not yelled at it in a couple of days, thankfully!

Yesterday, I moved all of his clothes into her room. He now refers to his old room as the baby’s room. We put the crib back together so that he won’t keep asking to sleep in there at various times. Waiting on our bedding to get here this week. Then, we’ll get some paint, and Stephen will paint the nursery. Yay! I’m about to go through our baby clothes to see what we have in there for a newborn. Just trying to get more prepared as we get closer!

Alrighty, it’s lunch time for me. More later! Stay warm during these cold days!

We have planned on having Abriella and Colby sharing a room and giving the baby Colby’s old room. That way, we can keep our guest room. We purchased bunk beds and Stephen put them together a few weeks back.  This are the beds we got.

They are full over full bunk beds and have stairs instead of a ladder. Seemed better for younger kids to us, plus we can separate the beds one day and have 2 full sized beds. (This is not how theirs are decorated, mind you). Yay!

Well, Abriella has been sleeping on her top bunk since we put the beds together. She’s loved it! Colby had absolutely no interest in sleeping in there once the beds were together. No desire whatsoever. There was the issue of their sound machines being different sounds (waterfall vs rain). Then, Colby wanted the door open for some reason. We could not figure that one out as neither have ever had their doors left open. Plus, he’d be going to a bigger bed with a pillow and blanket. He still sleeps without both of these despite our efforts to get him to add them.

So, we decided that we’d give him until the end of the year and then we’d have to make the transition, whether he was willing or not. We still have to get the nursery ready, but more than anything, we wanted them to have time to get used to it.

Well, last night, we had a loud thunderstorm. Colby ended up in the bed with us. That lasted for a little while, and then the storm seemed to die down (ended up just being a lull and it got much noisier later), so I was going to take him up to his bed. I cannot sleep with a child in my bed, even though he was being really good. But, I get up 50 times a night right now and it’s a major ordeal to change positions with my ever-expanding belly. So, I wanted to get him back to his bed ASAP. Well, Colby was not thrilled with this idea. So, Stephen said that he’d take Colby up and sleep with him in his bed in sister’s room. Colby was agreeable to this (surprising in the middle of the night). So, that’s what occurred. Nobody got great sleep, but everyone did sleep.

So, today we weren’t sure how this turn of events would impact the night’s sleeping arrangements. Colby was excited all day about his new bed, though! He wanted to nap in there, too…with me sleeping in there as well. HA! No way! So, I convinced him to sleep in his old room. We still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do about the napping since his sister doesn’t nap and he does, and she loves to be in her room reading and playing.

Anyway, evening came, and he was talking about the new bed and one of us sleeping in there, too. We told him that he could sleep in it by himself with sister in her bed. He kept asking about us sleeping in there, but we’d tell him that we couldn’t. Well, he excitedly turned on his sister’s sound machine, he climbed into his bed, laid on his pillow, asked for a doll (we gave him my old sock monkey—this is also different as he never has slept with anything), and wanted both him and the sock monkey covered up with the blanket.  Abriella was excited about him staying in there again as well.

It is currently 3 hrs since we closed their door and we have not heard A THING!! What?! Could it really go that smoothly?! Here’s to praying for them to sleep all night long. Seems that maybe that storm brought more blessings than just rain!!

Morning update:

He lasted 6 hours, and then started crying, and Abriella came out of the room and said that Colby was upset. Stephen went up and Colby said he wanted a “different bed.” Stephen decided to just let him go back to his old room for the rest of the night. Probably could’ve talked the buddy into staying in the new bed, but no biggie.  Today, Colby said that he’s going to stay the whole night in the new bed. We shall see. Six hours of quiet (with nobody coming out or crying) was way more than we expected!!